Page 135 of The Love Letter

‘What happened to the baby?’ asked Joanna slowly.

‘Well now, this is where I become confused. I’m told they found me, standing in the middle of the estuary, screaming that Niamh was dead in the house. Joanna, I was a sick girl after that for many months. Stanley Bentinck paid to have me taken above to hospital in Cork. I had pneumonia and they said my mind was wandering so much with stories that they put me in the madhouse once I was well. My mammy and daddy came to see me there. They told me all I’d seen had been a dream, brought on by the fever. Niamh had not come back. There’d been no baby. It was all my imagination.’ Ciara grimaced. ‘I tried for weeks telling them that she was still dead in the house and asking after the babe, but the more I talked about it, the more they shook their heads and left me longer in that godforsaken place.’

‘How could they?’ Joanna shuddered. ‘Someone must have taken the baby out of your arms!’

‘Yes. And I knew what I’d seen was real, but I was beginning to know that if I continued to say so, I’d be spending the rest of my life with the other mad people. So, eventually, I told the doctors I’d seen nothing and the next time my daddy came up to see me, I pretended to him too I was out of my fit, that I’d never seen anything, that the fever had made me hallucinate.’ Ciara gave a wry smile. ‘He was after bringing me back home that very day. Of course, from that moment on, everyone in town saw me as stone mad. The other children would laugh at me, call me names . . . I got used to it, played their game and frightened them with strange talk to get my own back,’ she cackled.

‘And what you saw was never mentioned again by your parents?’

‘Never. You know what I did, though, Joanna, don’t you?’

‘You went back to the house to check whether the letter was still there?’

‘I did, I did. I had to know I was right and they were wrong.’

‘And was it there?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you read the letter?’

‘Not then. I couldn’t, I didn’t know how. But later, when I’d learnt, I did, most definitely.’

Joanna took a deep breath. ‘Ciara, what did the letter say?’

Ciara regarded her thoughtfully. ‘I might be telling you that in a while. Listen to me, I haven’t finished.’

Is she telling the truth?Joanna wondered. Or was she, as the other inhabitants of the town seemed to think, simply deluded?

‘’Twas a good few years until it all made sense. I was eighteen when I discovered why. Why they’d kept it quiet, why ’twas something so important they’d been prepared to lock their daughter away and call her mad for saying what she’d seen . . .’

‘Go on,’ urged Joanna.

‘I was in Cork city, buying some linen for new sheets with Mammy. And I saw a newspaper, theIrish Times. There was a face on the front I knew. T’was the man I’d seen at the coastguard’s house.’

‘Who was he?’

Ciara Deasy told her.

32

He sauntered up the stairs to his hotel room, and discovered the room was unlocked. Shrugging at the slapdash behaviour of the chambermaid, who must have forgotten to lock it after cleaning it, he pushed it ajar.

Two uniformed officers were standing in his bedroom.

‘Hi. Can I help you?’

‘Would you be Ian C. Simpson, by any chance?’

‘No, I would not,’ he answered.

‘Then would you be telling us why you have a pen with his initials on it by your bed?’ asked another, older officer.

‘Of course. There’s a simple explanation.’

‘Grand. Ye be telling us then. Down at the station might be more comfortable.’

‘What? Why? I’m not Ian Simpson and I’ve done nothing wrong!’